The Minnesota Timberwolves start minicamp next week and “most” players will be in attendance.
Finally, we know when the Minnesota Timberwolves will be kicking off their fall minicamp.
We also have some word on how many Wolves players are expected to be in attendance, as well as what President of Basketball Operations Gersson Rosas hopes to get out of the camp..
Minnesota Timberwolves: Most players to attend minicamp next week
The Wolves are one of eight teams allowed to host a camp in their home market over the next few weeks as a result of being excluded from the NBA’s bubble in Orlando earlier this summer. Up until now, the actual dates and some of the procedural items surrounding the minicamp wasn’t public, but we finally know a bit more.
Jace Frederick of the St. Paul Pioneer Press published a piece that included a bit of previously unreported information about the upcoming fall minicamp.
On Monday, a week’s worth of individual workouts will begin. That will be followed by two weeks of group workouts, including up to an hour of five-on-five scrimmaging per day.
Here’s part of what Rosas said about the opportunity, as relayed by Frederick:
"“It’s an opportunity to really maximize our facility resources,” Rosas said. “Our guys, our staff has done an incredible job of setting up, basically, a campus that’s as safe as possible. We’ve got all the amenities we need for basketball, for meetings, for bonding. It should be good.”…“The ability to go from individual workouts to 5 on 5 individual competition and scrimmaging is something that our players have really wanted to do, so it’s a great opportunity for them to ramp up their training, their conditioning, their basketball,” Rosas said. “And it’ll allow our coaches to walk through and continue to lay the foundation offensively and defensively for what we’re going to do next year, and really take our player development to another level.”"
As Rosas alludes to, the team is also looking forward to the opportunity to bond off the court within this bubble that the organization is setting up. The Wolves setup, with Target Center and Mayo Clinic Square connected to each other as well as a hotel that they’ll effectively be quarantined within as part of the bubble, is a huge advantage for a bubble situation such as this.
The other piece of the article that’s interesting is the note that, “for the most part” all of the players will be present. For example, Malik Beasley will be there for the individual workouts, but as a restricted free agent, he will not participate in the team sessions.
Juancho Hernangomez will apparently not be there at all as he had a prior commitment to be filming a movie during this offseason.
Still no word on what kind of content the Wolves will put out for the masses to enjoy as we enter month seven in this Minnesota Timberwolves-less desert…